


Then and Now

by saiyanshewolf (gossamerstarsxx)



Series: Shot Through the Heart [8]
Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4
Genre: Alcohol, Canon Related, Canon-Typical Violence, Comfort, Drinking & Talking, Drunken Flirting, During Canon, Emotional Baggage, F/M, Flashbacks, Flirting, Guilt, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Late Night Conversations, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Chronological, One Shot, One Shot Collection, Past Relationship(s), Pre-Relationship, Sexual Tension, Tension, Widowed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-24
Updated: 2018-10-24
Packaged: 2019-08-07 00:17:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16397807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamerstarsxx/pseuds/saiyanshewolf
Summary: MacCready will never understand who she was before, but he understands who she is now...and he’s becoming far more attached than he’d like to admit.





	Then and Now

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings** : Alcohol and minor alcohol abuse; minor sexual references.
> 
>  **Notes** : I'm fascinated by the Sole Survivor's story and kind of wish the game had done a little more to focus on how goddamned traumatic what happened to them really was, because honestly, it goes way beyond your typical grief and culture shock. It’s unfathomable. This is my attempt to get into the details of that and how they might start to talk about it a little more deeply (at least as far as my own SS is concerned).
> 
> This is also an excuse to - yet again - play around with the similarities in the SS's story and MacCready's, and how MacCready might empathize with them.
> 
>  _Also_ also, I'm a sucker for angst and I love love love the idea of MacCready pining/lusting after the SS and feeling incredibly guilty about it :]
> 
> Stuff about Antha [here](http://saiyanshewolf.tumblr.com/tagged/my+sole+survivor).

# 1.

"I've got to head east again," Antha says, accepting her vodka tonic from White Chapel Charlie with a nod of thanks. "I'll be back way before Hancock's big party, I swear."

"Want company?" MacCready asks, his mouth running ahead of his brain.

Antha cocks an eyebrow as he takes a long sip of his Nuka-bourbon, wracking his brain for a decent excuse as to why he asked.

It gives him nothing.

_Crap._

"Uh...it's just a long road, is all," he mutters, wiping a hand over his goatee and bouncing his leg beneath the table. "And you don't have Dogmeat with you like you usually do, so I just...thought I'd ask?"

She laughs, eyeing him as if she still doesn't believe he's offering. "You...you want to come with me? Is that what you're saying?"

"Well sure - I mean, uh, if you...if you want me to, or whatever." One restless hand rises to adjust his hat. "I mean I can stay here and drink just as easy if you don't, so..."

"No!"

Surprised, MacCready glances up at Antha. Their eyes meet for a moment; hers are wide and round, as if she has surprised herself just as much as him, but she drops them before he can so much as blink.

"I mean, I - I just...I'd, um." She spins her wedding ring with her thumb, eyes fixed on the table, cheeks flushed pink. "I'd...appreciate the company. I don't like making that trip alone."

_None of my business._

"Is it that dangerous?" he asks, wondering if he has lost control of his mouth for good or if this is a just side effect of Antha's presence, because he has yet to finish his first drink and he keeps saying things that he shouldn't.

"Not really, if I'm careful," she says. "It's just..."

She stops fidgeting with her wedding band and crosses her arms over her chest, worrying her lower lip with her teeth instead - a new habit that is leaving a raw little red mark.

"It's better if I've got someone to watch my back, just in case," she says. "But full disclosure, I'm heading back to do what you'd call charity work."

Once, not that long ago, MacCready would have bowed out at the mere mention of working without getting paid. Judging from Antha's face, that's what she expects him to do now.

It's what he should do.

Instead, he hears himself saying, "Hey, I'm not opposed to all charity. Tell me about the job, what the hell."

Antha snorts laughter, reaches for her drink, and tosses it back. "Jobs. Plural. You know how I mentioned that the whole Minutemen thing fell in my lap?"

"Yeah?"

"Well, every time a settlement is having problems, guess who they track down first?" She smiles without enthusiasm, pointing at herself. "Preston helps, and the more settlers join up with the Minutemen the more they can help each other, but when things get terrible, they still send for me. I have no idea why, either."

"Probably because you've got that fancy title," MacCready replies, unable to resist teasing her. "General? Was that it?"

"If you start calling me that I swear I will set your hat on fire while you're sleeping," she grumbles, thanking Charlie with a nod as he hands her another vodka tonic. "I'm not the general of anything."

"Garvey would beg to differ," MacCready says as he accepts a new drink of his own. "C'mon, you can't like being called 'Vault Girl' better than 'General.'"

"Tch. Vault Girl isn't great, no. That's more what Raiders and Gunners call me." She shakes her head and scoffs again, gazing into the chipped glass in front of her. "Christ. I can't believe that's a thing I'm talking about right now. What a bunch of organized criminals call me. Like I'm the goddamn Silver Shroud or something."

"You're a lot less cheesy than that guy, at least."

Antha huffs laughter. "Yeah, I guess. It's still...it's so...bizarre."

She falls silent, staring into her glass, lost in her own thoughts. MacCready opens his mouth to ask if she'd rather be alone, then closes it in shock as Antha knocks back what's left of her drink and waves to Charlie for another.

 _This is really none of my business,_ he thinks, but the sight of Antha draining half of her fourth vodka tonic as soon as Charlie puts it in her hand shakes him. It's unusual for her to have four drinks in one night; a fifth is unheard of.

"What's so bizarre?" he asks at length, just to keep her talking - he knows from experience how dangerous it is to be drunk and alone with one's thoughts. "Your reputation with the Raiders and Gunners, it's not a bad thing. Hell, I'm pretty sure the reason the Gunners aren't stalking me as much anymore is 'cause I keep running around with you."

Antha points at him with one hand. "That. That entire statement, it blows my goddamn mind. It's ridiculous. That I'm...that this is who I am. What I do. That I've...I've killed enough people and wreaked enough havoc to earn the kinda reputation that protects somebody as intimidating as you."

MacCready blinks at her, taken aback. "Intimidating? Me?"

Antha looks up and cocks an eyebrow. "Mac, you could blow my brains out from over a thousand yards away if you felt like it. I think that qualifies as intimidating. Besides, you told the Gunners to fuck off. Nobody does that."

Incredulous, thrown off by the admiration in her voice, it takes him a moment to find his own. "Boss, you're a better shot than I am and you know it. And the hell do you mean nobody tells the Gunners to fuck off? You slaughtered most of a damn section on your own while I was half dead and useless."

"The only time I'm better is on a clear day with no wind and a target that won't move or shoot back." Antha snorts, rolling her eyes. "As for the Gunners, that doesn't count and you know it. I was 200 years late to the party and missed the 'do not fuck with' memo. My dumb ass almost got us both killed, so my point still stands."

"If I'm so intimidating why'd you hire me?"

"I needed help," she answers, "And at the time I only knew Piper, Preston, and Nick. I love them to death, but I can't make a living by being a saint all the time. I overheard someone in the Third Rail mention your name, so I thought I might as well give it a shot."

MacCready has to laugh at that. "Fair enough. Still, I dunno how I qualify as intimidating when you've got people like Cait and a literal friggin' Super Mutant on your side."

"There's different kinds of intimidating, Mac," Antha says, but she smiles as she speaks. "Look, I'm not scared of you or anything 'cause you're in my corner, it's just..."

"Just...?"

Antha sighs, pushes her hair back from her face, and takes a sip of her drink. "When I remember what I was like before, who I used to be...Christ, Mac, you would have terrified me."

Tension creeps up MacCready's spine and into his shoulders. Antha hasn't spoken about her past since that night in the Gunner house, and even then their conversation had revolved around the general pre-war world rather than Antha's personal pre-war life.

"Really? I'd be the one you're afraid of?" he says, erring on the side of caution and trying to keep things light. "No offense to Hancock or Strong, but y'know...ghouls. Super Mutants...?"

"Okay, point taken," she says with a faint smile. Taking another sip of her drink, she props her elbows on the table. Her gaze grows distant and she tucks her left thumb in against her palm, spinning the gold band on her ring finger, pressing her teeth into her bottom lip.

MacCready waves at Charlie to bring him another, studying Antha's flushed cheeks and hazy eyes.

"All right, boss?" he asks, wondering if he ought to tell her to slow down - if he ought to slow himself down.

Antha blinks, turning her head to look at him. It takes her eyes a moment to focus. "Huh? Yeah. Sorry. I...sometimes I wonder if one day I might just...wake up."

"You mean...wake up and it'll be before the war again?" MacCready asks, frowning. "Like this is all a bad dream or something?"

"Not exactly." Antha finishes her drink and signals for another as if she does this every night of her life. "It's more like...like everything I've done since I thawed out is just...maybe it's me running on autopilot, y'know? Like maybe I'm still in shock."

"Nine months is a long time for that kinda shock, boss," he murmurs.

She rubs one hand over the buzzed half of her hair, nodding her thanks to Charlie as he sets a another vodka tonic in front of her. "I know, and I know that's not what's going on. It's just...I can't...it's hard t'explain how...how not-me this is," she says, gesturing at herself with a faint sneer.

"It's the only you I know," he replies, hesitant. "But I guess you can try me, boss."

"You saw me from before," she mutters.

"I saw what you looked like, sure," he allows, "That don't mean I know who you were."

"I was exactly what I looked like," she answers. "Or I tried to be."

"And what was that?"

"Said it yourself." She drinks again. "Like something out of a magazine, right?"

MacCready nods.

"Right. Perfect. Something like it, anyway. Close as I could get." She pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs. "Let me just...start over."

"Sure, boss."

Antha nods her thanks and takes a long swallow of her drink.

"Nate taught me how to shoot. I told you that," she says, pushing her glass away and staring at her hands. "But I don't think I mentioned that I hated it. Hated every damn minute. Hated the way guns felt in my hands."

MacCready's eyes widen as his mind rewinds through the past few months, presenting memories of Antha like images from a scrapbook:

Antha with the .44 in her hands and a Gunner writhing on the ground in screaming agony with three bullets in his gut; with her skull bandanna pulled up around her face, taking out scouts and lookouts with her suppressed .10mm; sniping live grenades out of enemy hands, killing six with one shot; standing over a sobbing Raider, aiming her sawed-off shotgun at his forehead; with her Minuteman laser rifle in her hands, bathing her scarred face in blood-red light...

"I know," she says, and MacCready pulls himself out of his own head to find her looking up at him with a soft and rueful laugh. "I know, but before...Nate couldn't even take me hunting. I'd just cry."

MacCready shrugs. "Killing animals that have done nothing to you is different from killing people that try to kill you first," he says, unsure whether it is the right thing to say but wanting to say something.

"Maybe." Antha sips her drink, still fiddling with her ring. "Doesn't change the fact I hated guns. Hated violence. I was angry with Nate for weeks for insisting I learn how to shoot and angry at myself for being good at it."

"Why did he want you to learn so bad?"

Antha's eyes harden and for a moment MacCready fears he's overstepped his bounds. Before he can apologize, Antha waves a hand at him as if she can read his mind.

"It's not you," she says. "It's not. Ask whatever you want. I mean it. It's just...Nate. He made me learn because he was...Christ, Mac, he was paranoid. It wasn't his fault, it was Anchorage, the war...he wanted me to know how to defend myself. You know what I told him?"

MacCready shakes his head, waiting.

"I told him that was why I was in law school." She sneers as she speaks, voice thick with disgust, and knocks back the rest of her drink.

"God, I was so stupid." Antha pushes her glass away again, glaring at her hands with eyes like a radstorm. "Law school. Fucking law school. That was me, right there. Trying to apply civilized logic to the threat of nuclear war. I spent my whole adult life despising that kinda violence, the chaos it represented, spent years going to school so I could try to figure out how to control it, manage it, eliminate it."

She covers her face with one hand. For a terrifying moment MacCready thinks she might cry; he is both relieved and unnerved when she laughs instead.

"All that and y'know what I did? Soon as I thawed out?"

"You've never told me, no."

"I took Nate's ring off his frozen corpse, found a .10mm, and shot my way out of the Vault through two dozen radroaches." She laughs again, manic. "Didn't even stop to ask myself why they were so huge, where anyone else was. Didn't matter. Got outside. Mole rats tried to eat my face off, and I shot them too. Got to Sanctuary and killed every living thing there except Codsworth, then headed for Concord. Didn't know what year it was. Didn't care. The man who killed my husband had kidnapped my son, and I wanted him dead."

MacCready's eyes widen, but before he can speak Antha is talking again, still with that unnerving undercurrent of laughter in her voice.

"I killed everyone I found in Concord until I saw Preston. When I found him I found a laser rifle, too, and all that went through my head was _'Thank Christ, they'll be easier to kill with a scope.'_ "

"Explains how you got roped into the Minutemen," MacCready murmurs.

"More or less." Antha shrugs. "I killed as many Raiders as I could with the laser rifle and killed the rest with a mini-gun and an old suit of Power Armor. Cut them down in the street. A deathclaw came out of the sewers and I didn't even blink. I just killed it too."

MacCready chokes on his drink.

"You - you what?" He asks, coughing into the crook of his elbow. "You mean to say a fuh - a friggin deathclaw didn't faze you? That soon after leaving cold storage?"

Antha nods. "I...I didn't care. I didn't care what the hell it was or where it came from or why it was there. It was in my way and it had to die. I'm shocked that I had enough decency in me to escort Preston and his people back to Sanctuary. They told me about Diamond City and I didn't even sleep before I left."

"Christ, An."

She shrugs. "Codsworth was with me, and I found Dogmeat right outside of Sanctuary. I would have died without them. I didn't even make it to Lexington before I crashed. They cleared out an old cabin full of ghouls and radroaches and kept me safe while I slept like a corpse for about forty hours. When I woke up I had regained enough sense to realize I needed a real plan, so we headed back to Sanctuary."

She sighs rubs her temples. "I slowed down a little after that, but to tell you the truth, I didn't think about anything other than tracking down the people who took Shaun and killed Nate until after Nick got me a name."

"You…didn't mention someone had killed him," MacCready says, hesitant. "Before, I mean."

"Did I not…?" Antha frowns and shakes her head. "No, I guess I didn't. Sorry. I don't...I haven't talked about it with many people. Piper knows. She helped out with snooping around Diamond City. Nick's the detective, so I told him. That's not my point, sorry, I'm getting sidetracked. I don't think I even have a point, I think I'm drunk."

"I think you're right," MacCready says. "And I don't want you telling me anything you don't wanna tell me 'cause you're drunk, boss."

Antha waves a dismissive hand, the other still rubbing her temple. "I've been meaning to tell you, anyway. Besides, if you intend to stick around I kinda owe you the whole story."

"I...don't mind listening if that's what you want," he says, "But I ought to warn you, I'm...not...great. At this kind of thing."

"You've been fine so far," she replies with a shrug. "And it's a short story."

"Then I'm all ears, boss."

Antha begins.

# 2.

###  _[flashback]_

Antha Mayfaire Marciano had a plan for everything.

Well, she hadn't planned on the baby...but these things happened. She and Nate were married, and though she despised the military for the trauma Nate had experienced, it had given him the ability to provide for a wife in law school as well as a child. Shaun was an accident, but he was a happy one, and his birth only reinforced Antha's plans.

She and Nate had grown up in the unrest of the Resource Wars, had come of age during a period of uncertainty and suffering, and the moment Antha saw the tiny plus sign appear on the display of her pregnancy test she swore to herself that her child would not know the same world as its parents. Their child would not know war or chaos, only safety, security, order...and love. So much love. Above all, love.

War had ruined Nate's peace of mind. He never slept through the night and something as innocuous as Codsworth making popcorn could trigger a flashback. Over and over again he asked Antha to let him teach her to shoot, but for a long time she refused. Guns were part of the senseless chaos of war, and she wanted nothing to do with them. It took Nate going to his knees and begging for her to agree...and to both their surprise, she was an uncanny shot. Her success eased Nate's anxiety, but it disturbed Antha, even disgusted her.

It was violence that had brought the world to the brink of destruction, and while they could salvage the world, something must change...and Antha firmly believed that change must come from inside the system, from a place of sense and structure.

That belief had brought her to law school, but it was the growing love for her unborn son that drove her through that last grueling year, that had her asking Nate to read her passages from law books during dizzy spells and morning sickness, that had her writing papers at three in the morning when she couldn't sleep for little feet and fists battering her insides. She went into labor while studying case files and finished her dissertation during the first few weeks of Shaun's life, propped up in bed organizing notes with packs of frozen peas between her legs, reading out loud to them both as he nursed at her breast, typing up pages with him dozing in his bassinet next to the computer terminal.

It filled her heart to bursting to hold him, to stroke the downy black hair that had come from her and gaze into those stormy grey eyes that had come from Nate. She loved him so much, this brand-new little life, created from the love between herself and Nate, a love that she had once thought to be more overwhelming than anything she had ever felt. The news was dire and terrifying; her work was tedious and difficult. One look at Shaun, and she found the strength to go on, to keep working toward a better and brighter future.

It was for Shaun. It was all for Shaun.

The ink was barely dry on her degree the day the bombs fell.

Antha had signed up for the Vault for the same reason she had done so many things since Shaun was born, from struggling to focus on homework while she bled through layers of pads to buying the highest rated brand of diapers despite the exorbitant expense: because it was best for Shaun.

She had enough faith left to believe that there would be no nuclear apocalypse...but if there was, Shaun would be safe.

So when the news anchor's voice trembled as he spoke of the bombs, Antha hadn't believed him. It was a mistake, a false alarm. The world was unstable, but humanity wasn't that stupid, that petty.

It couldn't be.

Nate had no trouble believing. The moment he saw the soldiers and tanks in the street he became someone else, someone who gave orders and expected others to obey.

Antha did as he told her, gathering Shaun into her arms and resisting the urge to argue, to pack a bag. As they said farewell to Codsworth, Nate saluted. The sight of it sent a chill down Antha's spine, and as Nate guided them into the chaos of the street, she realized that his gaze was being drawn toward the marching soldiers...as if he wanted to join them.

"Nate, take him," she said, pushing Shaun into his father's arms. "He's less fussy for you."

It was true, and sometimes that stung. Right now it was a relief. Nate smiled at Shaun and kissed his downy black hair, the soldiers forgotten.

"Come on, this way."

Antha took Nate's hand and followed him, waiting for someone to announce the false alarm. They soon reached the Vault platform, standing on the wide metal circle with their fretting neighbors, and still Antha waited to be told that this wasn't happening.

"Honey?" Nate turned toward her, Shaun cradled in his arms, his grey eyes softening with concern. "Honey, are you all right?"

Antha opened her mouth to answer, and the horizon lit up with an unholy fire.

The platform sank below the earth, into the unknown, leaving all Antha's plans for the future to the bombs.

As the gate opened and the Vault-Tec workers ushered them further into the Vault, Antha followed instructions like an antique robot, blank-eyed and silent.

The last time she held Shaun was in a small room off the Vault entrance. She held him while Nate changed into the suit, and with his small, warm weight in her arms some of the shock ebbed away. She closed her eyes and kissed his soft hair, told him she loved him as she breathed in his delicate, familiar scent.

"Well, what do you think?"

She opened her eyes and giggled despite herself. Nate stood proud in the garish blue and yellow suit, grinning, hands fisted on his hips like a superhero. The suit itself was not attractive, but she liked the way it clung to him, how broad his shoulders looked, and she stood on tiptoe to kiss him as she told him so. He kissed her back, lingering, until Shaun began to fuss and Antha handed him back to his father.

After everyone had changed into their suits, the Overseer led them into a second area of the Vault, full of contraptions that Antha privately thought looked like high-tech coffins; she said nothing, however, because somewhere behind them one of her neighbors was already having a tearful breakdown and she didn't want to be the one to make things worse.

"Decontamination, that's all," the Overseer assured them with a beaming smile. "Step inside, it won't take long. The baby can go in with one of you," he added, addressing Nate and Antha.

"I'll take him," Nate whispered. "He's just now quieted down, no sense in upsetting him again."

Antha leaned down and kissed Shaun's forehead; ash she looked up, Nate kissed hers.

"We're safe, honey." He smiled at her. "Go on. See you soon."

As he carried Shaun toward the machine across from hers Nate hummed _Let There Be You_. Antha's heart flooded with warmth as she stepped inside, and she lifted her hand in a wave as the doors came down, but the warmth bled away, giving way to a deep, painful cold, and as creeping tendrils of frost obscured her husband and her son from view, she felt drowsy, confused.

And on the heels of that, she felt nothing.

# 3.

Antha pauses. She stares at her hands, throat working, twirling her wedding band with her left thumb, and MacCready finds himself struggling to swallow around the knot that has formed in his own throat. Her story hits so close to his heart that tears well up in his eyes, and he adjusts the brim of his hat to hide them in its shadow, mind racing.

Who had Antha been before the war? Before the bombs fell? He studies her face, the scars and the shadows beneath her eyes, and he can see the progression, can see how the woman she described became the woman sitting in front of him now...but the woman who had existed before the war is a stranger to him, and judging by Antha's stiff shoulders and hardened expression, she is becoming a stranger to Antha as well.

"The next thing I knew," she murmurs, "I was freezing again, watching from the frosted window of my pod while two scientists and a mercenary opened Nate's. Shaun was crying. I couldn't hear him, but I could see him. I could see his little eyes squeezed shut, his tiny hands clenched into fists, his mouth wide open…"

She stops again, swallowing hard, still staring at the table as if any human contact, even eye contact, would be enough to make her fall apart.

"I knew something was wrong because of him," she mumbles. "The mercenary. Kellogg, I found out later. I screamed and beat on the window of my pod, clawed at the door from the inside, and he stood there and watched, watched while one scientist tried to take Shaun from Nate."

MacCready's heart clenches even as his chest floods with burning anger. He holds his tongue, unwilling to interrupt even to offer support or sympathy.

Antha lifts her head and looks at him, her eyes once again reminiscent of the fury of a radstorm.

"Nate wouldn't give him up. So Kellogg shot him. Right here." She taps her forehead above her left eye. "They took Shaun and closed Nate's pod. Then the cold started creeping inside me again. The last thing I remember before everything went black is looking at Nate's body through the smears of blood my fists had left on my window."

Antha falls silent, dropping her eyes and lifting her hands back to her temples.

For a long moment, MacCready says nothing. He can think of nothing to say, no way to put into words how close he comes to understanding. The knot in his throat won't fade, and there is a simmering fury in his chest that is eager to see Kellogg in crosshairs. It takes him nearly a minute to gather himself enough to speak, and even then his words are hesitant, awkward.

"Goddamn," he says; no substitute seems appropriate. "I...I wish I could say something better, but there's...Christ. There's nothing I can say to do justice to how awful that is, or how sorry I am that it happened."

He stops himself there, before he gives in to the urge to keep talking, to tell her about Lucy and Duncan, if only to let her know that she isn't alone. Instead, he clears his throat and asks, "Have you found out anything else about this Kellogg guy, or is Nick still looking?"

Antha tries to smile and fails, then takes a couple deep breaths before answering.

"Thank you," she says, "I mean it. And yes, Nick and I tracked down Kellogg not long before I first came to Goodneighbor."

"Nick knows what he's doing," MacCready replies. "What'd you find out?"

"Shaun's at the Institute," Antha says; her voice has grown hard again, bordering on cruel. "He's...older. Kellogg wouldn't tell me how to get there or how much older."

When she says Kellogg's name her mouth curls into a vicious little sneer that MacCready hopes never to see directed at himself.

"So what'd you do with him?" he asks, though he has an idea.

The vicious sneer becomes a vicious smile. She unstraps her .44 Magnum, pushing it across the table toward MacCready and tapping her finger on part of the stock.

The engraving is weathered but readable: _Conrad Kellogg._

MacCready shudders at the sight of the name despite the alcohol working on his nerves. Antha has been carrying the .44 since he met her, but only now does he realize that she's been carrying it like a trophy.

 _And she thinks_ _I'm_ _intimidating._

Still, the anger that had risen in him on her behalf settles somewhat knowing Kellogg is a dead man. He pushes the .44 back to her.

"Good," he says, and this time Antha's smile is more genuine. It's still thin and bladelike but not so vicious, and at six drinks deep MacCready can't stop himself from smiling back.

"Then we agree." She tucks her hair behind her ear and sighs; a few of the fearsome hard lines fade from her face and MacCready can once again see that softness that had so intrigued him the first time he laid eyes on her.

"Now you see what I keep wondering if I'll wake up from," she mumbles, sounding somewhere between distressed and bemused. "If I'll wake up tomorrow and hate myself for...for everything."

Before MacCready can decide how to respond she sighs again, leaning back in her chair.

"I keep wondering what Nate would think of me," she murmurs, clutching the ring on the cord around her throat with her right hand and twirling her wedding band with her thumb.

MacCready - who had often asked himself what Lucy would think of him, even when she was still alive - resists the mad urge to reach out and take her hand. He occupies himself with finishing his drink and choosing his words until the madness passes.

"Obviously I didn't know the guy," he says at length, "But...if it was my wife hunting down our son's kidnappers and putting them in the ground, I'd be proud as hell. I can't imagine a husband or father that wouldn't be."

Antha smiles at him again, one of those small, soft ones he sees less and less often as time goes by. She glances up at him through her lashes and this time he can't pretend that his heart isn't racing.

"You'll have to tell me about them sometime," she says, and before he can do more that stutter she is on her feet, swaying and grabbing the back of her chair for support. MacCready gets up to steady her, tipsy but not near drunk enough to be off-balance.

"You all right?" he asks. "I've never seen you drink that much in one go, let alone that fast."

"I'll be fine. You're right, I haven't had more than four drinks in one night for…" She trails off. "For centuries."

They look at one another. Antha's flushed cheeks twitch as she struggles to fight off a grin and MacCready runs a hand over his scruffy goatee to hide his smirk...and then they both burst into laughter, the kind of absurd giggling fit unique to the drunk and exhausted.

# 4.

He walks her to her room at the Rexford, across the hall from his. She weaves as they walk but only trips once, on the broken stair before their floor, and MacCready grabs her around the waist and pulls her to him before she can fall on her face.

"Nice reflexes," she breathes, leaning back against his chest with a nervous laugh. "And after you've been drinking, too."

The pressure of her body against his sends a shiver down his spine, until the hair along the back of his neck prickles to attention. He releases her immediately, taking a step back and lifting his hat

"Lucky for you. And your face." He runs anxious fingers through his hair and leans against his doorframe as Antha picks the lock on her own door. The Rexford only has real keys for a handful of its rooms - his included - but Antha likes her privacy and she's skilled with bobby pins.

"Yeah, yeah," she mutters. "Christ knows I don't need to fuck it up any worse than I already have."

MacCready snorts before he can stop himself. "I've seen messed up faces. Yours ain't one of them."

"I'll take that as a compliment." The lock clicks open and Antha gets to her feet, wobbling. "Should I bang on your door in the morning? If you're still up for making the trip when you're no longer under the influence of Nuka-bourbons, anyway."

"Sure," he answers. "If you still want me along after the vodka tonics wear off."

"There wasn't much tonic involved." She steps into her room and grins at him again. "If you don't answer I'm gonna pick the lock, you know that, right?"

MacCready arches an eyebrow. "I make no promises about what you might see if that happens."

He means it to be self-deprecating, imagining himself knocked out spread eagle on the bed in ragged shorts, drooling and snoring, but instead it comes out sounding suggestive.

"Wait," he says, "Wait, no - not like - I mean I wasn't, you know I didn't - it's not like - !"

_Shut up, shut up, shut up!_

The words continue to spill out of his mouth, a senseless, meandering apology that makes Travis Miles seem suave by comparison, until Antha's bemused voice cuts him off.

"Mac."

He glances up at the sound of his name, and every word he knows evaporates from his brain.

Antha shakes her head, a slow little smile spreading across her face as her half-lidded green eyes rake over him from his boots to his hat. MacCready's breath locks in his chest and he shifts on his feet, wondering why his duster seems too heavy, too hot, why his pants are so tight around his -

_Oh no._

Heat floods his face as she catches his eye again. He can't look away from her, can't even seem to move more than it takes to swallow around the panic in his throat, but Antha only smirks, biting her lip as her gaze drifts down.

"I don't think I'll see anything I can't handle," she purrs. "Night, Mac."

Her door closes behind her before MacCready can remember how to open his mouth. It takes another several seconds before he is able to coordinate his brain and his body well enough to turn around, unlock his door, open it, walk through it, close it, and lock it again.

Even then he only stands in the middle of his room like a malfunctioning synth, trying to process whatever the hell had just happened.

He keeps defaulting to an absurd urge to giggle.

There is only one other time in his life that he remembers feeling this way, and the slow, pervasive anguish of Lucy's memory is a heavy tide that washes over his bizarre giddiness until all that's left is a whirlpool of guilt and confusion churning in his stomach.

He strips to his shirt and pants (too terrified by the thought of Antha breaking in to sleep in less), throws himself face-down on the old mattress…and rolls onto his back when the pressure down there is too much to ignore. Miserable, confused, half-drunk and half-hard, he slings an arm over his eyes and tries to wrestle his mind into some semblance of submission, but the longer he lies there awake in the dark, the worse it gets. The loss of Lucy sits heavy in his chest, a crushing pain that ought to overshadow everything else...yet his thoughts keep drifting to Antha, to the particular radstorm-green of her eyes, the way she laughs when she's surprised, the little mark on her lower lip from her teeth, the heat of her body against his when he caught her on the stairs...

_Dammit._

He pushes his dick to one side in an effort to allay some of the tension, then sits up, scrubbing his palms over his face until his stubble burns his skin. After feeling in the dark for the bedside table, he reaches beneath it and grabs the bottle of whiskey he keeps there for the nights when sleep won't come. Without pausing to think, he knocks back the equivalent of four shots, grimaces, shrugs, and downs a fifth before throwing himself back across the bed.

 _There,_ he thinks,  _Take that._

It's an idiotic attitude to have, but MacCready is beyond being embarrassed by his own idiocy. Besides, it works; he's out within minutes, less asleep than unconscious.


End file.
